Alexander Hamilton And Fear Of The Majority - America Today, The Mob Rule Of The Unwashed

In the early days of the American republic, a vigorous debate went on, especially between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson on the nature of democracy and the balance between the governing and the governed.  

Hamilton was suspicious of Jefferson’s populism – i.e. a deep faith in the wisdom of the people – and new that the American electorate could easily vote with unenlightened self-interest and venality no different from Jake Cade, the anarchist/populist of Henry VI, or the plebeians of the fickle mob of Coriolanus or Julius Caesar.  

In his Speech on the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton said:

All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born; the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second.

Hamilton wrote further of his concerns in his Federalist Papers:

The republican principle demands, that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they entrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden gust of passion, or every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests...

When occasions present themselves in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited, in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from the very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men, who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure

The Framers agreed with Hamilton and created the Senate which would be the venue for such ‘cool and sedate reflection’; but Hamilton was far more of an aristocrat to trust an institution which was still an elected body.  His view of statesmanship reflected his views. As Historian Bruce Miroff noted:

Alexander Hamilton attempted to be, an aristocratic yet visionary statesman. Hamilton's statesman would resist and rise above popular prejudices and passions; occupying a commanding eminence, he would plan grand projects for the nation's future. His architectonic vision detailed instruments for efficient action: the energetic executive and the administrative state.

 Having shaped these powerful tools, he turned them to economic use, fashioning a carefully integrated set of policies that fostered the rise of manufacturing in the United States. While the aristocratic statesman did not expect the public to understand his vision, he did expect it to respond to the prosperity and power that his efforts produced. As the nation rose to greatness, so, ultimately, would his fame. 

 

It isn't bad enough that American democracy has devolved from the reasonable governance envisioned by the Founding Fathers - sane, reflective, objective, universally patriotic men providing wise guidance to the electorate - into a free-for-all, a chaotic, inchoate brouhaha of petty demands of insular, selfish motivation. The country has fragmented into artificial, competing interest groups of race, gender, and ethnicity. 

Not only do the unwashed rule, they rule in caviling, self-centered cabals.  The House of Representatives is a side show of bearded ladies, babies with two heads, dwarves, and grotesque giants.  The Senate, the compromise between Hamilton and Jefferson, designed to be a buffer between the caterwauling of the masses and the higher powers of national leadership, had descended into the same mindless anarchy. 

The very idea of federalism, the core principle of the Constitution, has devolved into the worst kind of narrow political demands. If the state legislatures aren't bad enough, catcalling, smearing, and food fighting over issues supposedly good for the citizens under their protection, municipalities have sunk to an even lower, unconscionably ignorant morass of vaporous politicians. 

Avowed Socialists are mayors of New York and Washington.  Portland and Seattle have become ungovernable Third World shitholes of crime, addiction, incivility, and political anarchy. Hundreds of people are shot and killed every weekend in Chicago where the mayor claims racism, police brutality, and federal indifference for the violence.  Baltimore, St. Louis, and Memphis ranking near the top of the world's most violent cities are havens for illegal immigrants, safe places for gangs, drug crewes, and wanton criminals.

It is hard to imagine how the country after World War II and its uncompromising defeat of Hitler and Hirohito and recognized as the beacon of sanity, the nation of opportunity, justice and fairness, has so rapidly descended into such political dissension, division, and unholy chaos. 

 

It is even harder to imagine how so many voters think that such division into identity groups who claim legitimacy and justice only by sex, race, and ethnicity is a good thing; voters who have chosen separatism and superficial judgment over  central, universal, moral ethos. 

Jefferson made it quite clear when he explained 'the pursuit of happiness'. Americans were to pursue individual enterprise and benefit from their labors but not at the expense of others.  Individualism and community were two branches of the same tree.  He envisaged a country whose citizens acted with individual spirt, desire, and determination but were mindful of the larger commonwealth in which they acted.  All Americans were to abide the same moral, Christian code. 

Other powerful nations of the world, many America's adversaries have understood the absolute necessity of a central ethos around which all enterprise - personal, regional, and national - revolves.  China has refused to tolerate ethnic separatism, and seen such parochial demands antithetical to the nation.  The Uighurs, the Tibetans, and the Taiwanese are insurrectionists, antithetical to the smooth running or the state. a

Autocracy? Hardly. Based on a Confucian ethos, a long history of Chinese world influence, and thousands of years of dynasty and high culture, China has raised hundreds of millions out of poverty, engineered wealth, prosperity, and world leadership. 

Russia, renascent after decades of ruinous Communism has harkened back to its imperial past and brooked no dissension from separatist ethnic groups in the Caucasus. A united, indivisible Russia must never be challenged. 

Turkish President Erdogan has the same intimations of empire and is determined to return the country to its Ottoman, fundamental Islamic roots.  Iran, however insidious and adversely militant as the theocratic regime might be, it has the same unifying, absolute commitment to its Persian and Islamic past. 

Europe is in the process of electing ultra-conservative governments in France, Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands.  Italy, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland have already vowed to shut the door to unwanted African and Middle Eastern immigrants, to close mosques and to deport any imam or mullah who preaches separatism and anti-European, Christian values. 

'I am Giorgia', shouts Giorgia Meloni, President of Italy. 'I am a woman, I am a mother, I am a Christian, I am European, and I am Italian', the litany of new wave Europeanism sweeping the continent.  Enough 'diversity' and calls for 'the other'.  It is time to recognize Europe's greatness and return it to his legendary leadership. 

Only the United States clings to its febrile, fantastical, baldly idealistic view of society.  Not only does the American Left lionize the mob, but in its call for Diversity Equity Inclusion, encourages its basest, least intelligent, bottom-feeding instincts. 

Hamilton is turning over in his grave and Jefferson stirring.  How could this new country, born of the Enlightenment, guided by such profound and universal moral and ethical values have fallen so far into anarchy and international disrepute?

It is probably too late to reverse the course, to re-establish the moral order, patriotism, and universal civility envisaged by the Founding Fathers; to late to center the nation, to end deliberately engineered divisiveness and hostility, to return to civilized values and culture; and so be it.  You reap what you sow. 

Historical revisionism - the rewriting of history, the expunging of inconvenient truths, and the blatant ignorance of the past can only accelerate America's descent to the bottom.  The unwashed majority, already ignorant, marginally educated, decidedly fundamentalist, and unremittingly parochial will continue to grow at the country's peril. China and Russia are watching from the wings, patiently awaiting its downfall.